Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1211
“Jesus said unto him, Rise, take up your bed, and walk.” John 5:8.
IT was the Sabbath! Where would Jesus spend that day and how? He would not spend it, we are quite sure, in any unhallowed manner or in any trifling sort. What would He do? He would do good, for it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath. Where would He do good? He knew that there was one sight in Jerusalem which was particularly painful—the sight of a number of poor persons, blind, lame and crippled, who were lying round a pool of water, waiting for a blessing which seldom came. He thought He would go and do good there, for there good was most needed. Would to God that all Christ’s servants felt that the most urgent necessity has the greatest claim upon them—that where there is the most need, there they ought to exercise the most kindness—and that no way of spending the Sabbath could be better than that of bearing the Gospel of Salvation to those who are most in need of it.
But it was a feast day as well. It was a great festival of the Jews and Jesus had come up to Jerusalem to keep the feast. Where will He feast? Has someone asked Him to his house? There were Mary and Martha and Lazarus down at Bethany. Would they ask Him? Sometimes even Pharisees and Publicans would open their houses and make a banquet for Him. Where would He go? Was it a singular choice for Him to say to Himself, “My feast shall be kept among the blind and the crippled and the lame”? No, it was not singular, for He had said to one who had invited Him to his house, “When you make a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind: and you shall be blessed; for they cannot recompense you: for you shall be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.”
What He urged others to do, He would be sure to do Himself. It was just like He to say, “I shall spend My feast in an hospital. I will use this day, sacred both to joy and rest, by going where the sick lie thickly clustered together, for to Me to be merciful is to be glad—to bless men is to find rest for My heart.” Christ never feasts more joyfully than when He is doing good to others. And the greater the act of His liberality—the higher the deed of power which is worked by His love—the more is His blessed Nature filled with rest and joy. See you, then, the Savior going down to the pool of Be-thesda, determining that in the spot where sorrow and disease reigned supreme, He would exercise His mercy and overcome evil.
I shall ask you to go with me, and with the Savior, down to Bethesda’spool. I shall call it THE HOSPITAL OF WAITERS. While we are there we shall notice that Jesus Christ fixes His eyes upon the most helpless person among that waiting company. And then, thirdly, we shall have to note with joy how our Lord dealt with the man after a Gospel fashion.
I. First of all, I said we would go down to the POOL OF BETHESDA with its five porches, which I have called the hospital of the waiters—for all those people who were there were doing one thing—they were waiting. They were waiting for the moving of the waters. There was nothing else they could do. They were lying sick, with anxious eyes gazing upon the little pool, hoping to see it bubble up—to see a widening circle coming upon its placid surface—waiting to plunge in immediately, for whoever plunged in first would receive a miracle—one and no more.
Said I not truly that it was an hospital of waiters? Too easily may we find a large company of waiters now-a-days. I wish it were not so, but great numbers are always waiting. I think I know enough to fill all the five porches. Some are waiting for a more convenient season and they have a notion, perhaps, that this more convenient season will come to them on a sick bed. Possibly, they even think, upon a dying bed. It is a great mistake! They have heard the Gospel and they believe it to be free though they have not accepted it. They go to a place of worship, continually, and they say to themselves, “We hope that one of these days we shall be able to lay hold of Christ, and shall be healed of the disease of sin, but not now.”
How many years have you been waiting, some of you, for the convenient season—five, six, eight, ten, twenty? I know some who have been waiting 20 or more years! I remember speaking to them about their souls and they said, then, that
they did not intend to neglect the matter. They were waiting and the time had not quite come. They did not exactly explain what stood in the way, but it was a something that was to be gone in a few months—maybe even weeks. But it has not gone and they are still waiting! And I fear that they will wait until the Judgment Day will come and find them unsaved! They always reckon upon a good tomorrow, but tomorrow is a day which you will not find in the almanac—it is found nowhere but in the fool’s calendar.
The wise man lives today. What his hand finds to do, he does at once with all his might. Today is God’s time and whenever we are saved it will be our time. But, alas, many lie waiting till their joints stiffen, their eyes fail, their ears are heavy and their hearts more and more insensible. O you simple ones, will it be so, forever? Will you wait till you are cast into Hell? On a second porch, a crowd of waiters are waiting for dreams and visions. You, perhaps, think these are very few, but they are not so few as you imagine. And they have a notion that perhaps one of these nights they will have such a vivid dream of judgment that they will wake up alarmed—or such a bright vision of Heaven that they will wake up fascinated by it!